


mothers

by Artikka



Series: of mothers and fathers [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol, Anakin Skywalker Needs a Hug, Gen, Implied abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Shmi Skywalker Deserves Better, Shmi Skywalker Needed A Hug, Slavery, Supportive Obi-Wan Kenobi, Tatooine, Zygerria Arc, a decidedly not generous interpretation of Shmi Skywalker and Cliegg Lars's relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:08:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26069248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artikka/pseuds/Artikka
Summary: Anakin hasn’t said those words with such bitterness, such disgust, since he had first come to the Temple with a detonator still buried in his abdomen.He takes another swig straight from the bottle, too quickly for Obi-wan to consider stopping him. “His name was Cliegg Lars. A moisture farmer. He took one look at my mother, decided she’d make a good wife, and bought her.”* * * *Two years into the Clone Wars, on the anniversary of Shmi Skywalker's death, Obi-wan and Anakin have a conversation.
Relationships: Anakin Skywalker & Shmi Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker
Series: of mothers and fathers [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1892530
Comments: 56
Kudos: 512





	mothers

He doesn’t know what draws him to Anakin’s quarters that night. They’re leaving for a campaign tomorrow and it’s the middle of the night; if he doesn’t get enough rest he could put their whole battalion in danger. But the force is humming with a steady pulse of _hurt-anger-misery_ in a way that feels so distinctly _Anakin_ that Obi-wan’s out of his quarters before he’s even considered it.

The door to Anakin’s room is unlocked, which is unusual, to say the least. The freedom of being able to lock his own door had been something Anakin had latched on to with a fervor back when he first joined the Temple–something apparently forbidden to the slaves of Tatooine.

_“The Masters don’t want the slaves to lock their doors,” Anakin had said once, then flinched as if expecting a rebuke for using the word “Master” in such away, “it gives us ‘dangerous ideas’” he continued, as if quoting someone, “like we have the right to privacy, or own ourselves,”_

Swallowing a feeling of foreboding, Obi-wan knocks on the door. After some time with no response, he slowly inches the door open.

It takes a minute for his eyes to adjust to the light before he finds Anakin in the corner of the room.

He’s bleary eyed and unfocused, with a bitter scowl twisting his features and dark bruise-colored circles under his eyes. His frame is hunched over in one of the chairs off to the side, elbow on the table, head in his hands, and a bottle of what looks like the most disgusting alcohol in the galaxy.

It’s an alarming sight for a number of reasons; for one, Anakin rarely, if ever, drinks, and for another, they’re leaving for a campaign tomorrow and Anakin never lets himself leave for a campaign in anything but top form.

Obi-wan hesitates a bit before asking, “Anakin? Are you alright?”

There’s no response. Anakin deigns to look up with an exhausted glare before putting his head back in his hands.

“Anakin?” says Obi-wan, stepping fully into the room and closing the door behind him. “You know you can talk to me.” _Instead of drinking yourself to death,_ he doesn’t say, and hopes Anakin doesn’t catch the thought.

The silence stretches so long that Obi-wan’s certain Anakin’s never going to speak, and turns to leave. But then, he twitches minutely and runs his hands through his hair.

“My mom,” he says hoarsely, “she died on this day.”

Oh.

Obi-wan had known, peripherally, that Anakin’s mother was no longer alive. Anakin had never told him directly, but he had picked it up from his various hints and reactions in conversation. He swallows back a rather irrational bout of hurt that Anakin had never talked to him about it–it must have been painful, and it’s not his place to pry. He doesn’t know exactly _what_ happened to her, but a sinking suspicion in his gut had always whispered that it had something to do with the dreams Anakin had been having. The dreams. . . he had dismissed.

Suddenly Shmi Skywalker’s death feels so much more real. He’s disappointed in himself for barely sparing her a thought until now; a part of him had always vaguely believed that she was too kind, too strong, too steady, to be worn down by the desolate sands of Tatooine.

He had only heard about her from the stories Qui-gon shared; how much worse was it for _Anakin_ to bear? 

“I. . . I’m so sorry,” he says, taking a seat next to Anakin at the table. “Would you. . . like to talk? About it?”

Anakin looks up, and _force,_ he looks even worse up close. His eyes are bloodshot and glazed, and the circles underneath seem permanently etched into his face. Now that he’s sitting next to him, Obi-wan sees that his hands are shaking. 

“What’s there to talk about?” Anakin says, voice slurred and heavy with emotion, the Outer Rim accent he’d worked so hard to rid himself of over the years returning full force. 

For a second, Obi-wan wonders what triggered this episode. Shmi’s death was a terrible, terrible thing, but this reaction from Anakin was new. He would have noticed if this had happened to Anakin every year. . .wouldn’t he?

Then he realizes.

Oh. _Zygerria._

The Zygerria mission, completed just a few weeks ago, had been miserable for all three of them; Ahsoka, Anakin, and himself. And while Obi-wan might have gotten the brunt of it physically, it had been just another thing to endure, for him. Not like it was for Anakin. Not a return to _slavery_. And to think, Anakin had to play the role of a _slave master_.

Obi-wan wonders, not for the first time, what the council was thinking, sending Anakin on that mission. Perhaps it had just been an oversight, but it was exceptionally cruel nonetheless.

He sighs. Anakin doesn't seem to hear him. Something about Zygerria nags at him and–

“Anakin," he says slowly, "was your mother. . . free, when she died?” He had heard something about a Lars family from Padme at some point, but he’s not certain.

Anakin scoffs. A silence drags on again, then he speaks. “No.”

“Padme told me–”

“Told you what?” Anakin interrupts harshly, “that a kind man fell in love with her and freed her, and then they got married in some perfect blaze of romance? That she found herself smitten and was swept off her feet by a knight in shining armor?” He laughs brokenly. “That’s just a fairytale the Core Worlders like to tell themselves.” 

_Core Worlders,_ Obi-wan thinks dazedly. Anakin hasn’t said those words with such bitterness, such disgust, since he had first come to the Temple with a detonator still buried in his abdomen.

He takes another swig straight from the bottle, too quickly for Obi-wan to consider stopping him. “His name was Cliegg Lars. A moisture farmer. He took one look at my mother, decided she’d make a good wife, and bought her.”

There’s bile rising in the back of his throat, Obi-wan notes distantly.

“A perfect Tatooine love story,” Anakin continues bitterly, voice so jagged it’s almost sinking into Huttese-adjacent tones, “A man sees a pretty slave and thinks, hey, I’d sure love to have her every morning. But it’s not enough for him to just buy a night with her. No. He wants her all to himself, every day. Day, night, whenever he wants. And to think himself kind, he’ll take her detonator out, tell her she’s free. Then, he’ll say she owes him his freedom. That she has to marry him now, to show that she’s grateful. He gave her freedom, the least she can do is give him a wife.”

Obi-wan tries to swallow back his mounting horror. It doesn’t work. “Are you. . . sure,” he says instead, hesitantly, “that it was like this for your mother?”

“Didn’t I tell you, Master?” Anakin says, voice suddenly frighteningly monotone, “It’s the quintessential Tatooine love story. The moisture farmer and the slave.”

He takes a drink from the bottle again. Silence descends upon the two of them for some time, Obi-wan having no idea what to say in response. He might be in shock, he thinks vaguely. He knows, of course, that the galaxy is a vicious place, full of vicious, cruel people, but this has him uncharacteristically unsettled. He’s seen and heard worse, throughout this endless-seeming war. It doesn’t stop him from feeling a bit sick. 

He’s reminded, suddenly, of a different type of Master visiting Tatooine and telling a young slave boy he was free, only to tell the boy he would be trained as a Jedi. He wonders how much choice Anakin was given. 

“She was taken by Tusken Raiders one night,” Anakin says once the silence has continued for so long Obi-wan felt himself doubting whether he’d ever speak again. “while she was out gathering mushrooms. Isn’t it funny that she was the only one out there, Obi-wan?” His voice is slurring again. “Isn’t it bad enough that he bought her as a wife? Did he have to buy her as a servant too?”

“The Raiders,” Obi-wan asks, finding his voice, “they killed her?”

“Tortured her.” Anakin’s hand shakes so strongly the bottle falls from his grip, Obi-wan catching it before it can shatter into pieces on the floor, “For a month. Beat her, whipped her, broke her bones. . .” his voice suddenly oozes revulsion and rage, “ _touched_ her.”

He stares off into the distance, looking past Obi-wan and all in all probably only peripherally aware of his presence. “She died of her injuries. Moments after I found her.” 

An image worms its way into his mind, of Anakin bloody and exhausted, holding his mother in his arms as she died. Maybe Anakin would be apologizing over and over in desperate whispers, the same way he did whenever Obi-wan or Ahsoka were injured on the battlefield. Maybe his mother would reach an arm up, caress his face for the last time, and tell him she loved him just before she died. He takes a breath, and tries to swallow back feelings of being woefully inadequate for this conversation, to be the support Anakin needs. “I’m sorry, Anakin. No one deserves that, least of all your mother.”

Anakin’s lips twist into a bitter smile and he murmurs something about “Watto” and “wouldn’t agree” that Obi-wan doesn’t catch the rest of. He pushes strands of hair plastered to his face out of the way with trembling fingers, then reaches for the bottle again. 

“Well,” he says dully, “she’s free now.”

Obi-wan thinks of the haunted look in Anakin’s eyes, his hunched posture, the imperceptible twist in his voice whenever he has to call someone “Master”.

_Are you?_ he wants to ask.

He doesn’t.


End file.
